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The Claude glass : use and meaning of the black mirror in western art
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The Claude glass : use and meaning of the black mirror in western art

Author: Arnaud Maillet
Publisher: New York : Zone Books, 2004.
Edition/Format:   Book : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
"Arnaud Maillet's The Claude Glass is a contribution to the history of Western visual culture. In this first full-length study of a largely forgotten optical device from the eighteenth-century, Maillet reconfigures our historical understanding of visual experience and meaning in relation to notions of opacity, transparency, and imagination. Many are familiar with the Claude glass as a small black convex mirror used
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Additional Physical Format: Online version:
Maillet, Arnaud.
Claude glass.
New York : Zone Books, 2004
(OCoLC)645825898
Material Type: Internet resource
Document Type: Book, Internet Resource
All Authors / Contributors: Arnaud Maillet
ISBN: 1890951471 9781890951474
OCLC Number: 55016164
Language Note: Translated from the French.
Description: 300 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Contents: Definitions : characteristics and aspects --
Problems of naming --
Problems of historical sources : the disappearing mirror --
Demoniac mirrors --
Catoptromancy --
Magnetism, hypnotism --
Disquiet --
Fascination --
Regarding the eye and the visual field --
A reductive mirror : regarding tonality --
An idealizing mirror --
Limits on the use of the Claude mirror --
Toward deception and beyond --
Devaluation --
Abstraction(s) --
An irremediable loss.
Other Titles: Miroir de Claude.
Responsibility: Arnaud Maillet ; translated by Jeff Fort.

Abstract:

"Arnaud Maillet's The Claude Glass is a contribution to the history of Western visual culture. In this first full-length study of a largely forgotten optical device from the eighteenth-century, Maillet reconfigures our historical understanding of visual experience and meaning in relation to notions of opacity, transparency, and imagination. Many are familiar with the Claude glass as a small black convex mirror used by artists and spectators of landscape to reflect a view and make tonal values and areas of light and shade visible. Maillet, in this account, goes well beyond this particular function of the glass and situates it within a richer archaeology of Western thought, exploring the uncertainties and anxieties about mirrors, reflections, and their potential distortions.

He takes us from the background of the "black mirror" through a full evaluation of its importance in the age of the picturesque, to its persistence in a range of technological and representational practices such as photography, film, and contemporary art."--Jacket.

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